OUR BIG FAMILY
APG23 - Coop. La Fraternità
The La Pietra Scartata processing workshop in which La Madre Terra products are prepared has been part of La Fraternità Cooperative since 2007. This started out life in 1992 and was developed within the Pope John XXIII Community (APG23) association founded by Father Oreste Benzi.
The cooperative includes another 18 educational or vocational training centres whose common purpose is to place people at the centre, particularly those in most need.
Today La Fraternità is able to provide services to 4 Italian regions: Veneto, Emilia Romagna, Marche and Umbria, and its heart and roots belong to Emilia Romagna in Rimini where it first saw the light of day.
La Fraternità belongs to the Condividere Papa Giovanni XXIII consortium which functions as a place in which to interlink and coordinate the work of all the cooperatives run by the Pope John XXIII Community guaranteeing that the different forms they take all share the community dimension of welcoming and sharing with the least.
The basic aim of the consortium is to complete the work started by the Pope John XXIII Community and to put into practice all the initiatives relating to work and placing in education people who, in various ways, are considered the poorest in society.
The consortium also works to promote, support and set up new local entities, particularly where the Community already has an established presence, according to the principles of the Altruistic Society, in which the weakest members are the most needed because they are humanising factors for all relationships and social practices.
As Father Benzi put it: "a society in which people are at the centre, seen as living parts of a living body and in which if one part is not well the whole body is unwell and the first thing to think of is to cure the one feeling unwell.
Building this society, organising its work, exchanging its goods and organising its school are all shaped by the weakest members, people with disabilities, the elderly, pregnant women and children all of whom have a decisive role in the social fabric.
Work takes on its proper role of helping to construct the common good, thus freeing it from being reduced to a mere factor in generating profit. It follows from this that all the people making up this social body are enabled to share their own gifts with others through work.
The principle shaping the altruistic society is altrocentrism, which stands in contrast to the egocentrism of the for-profit society. The dynamic generated by this principle is altruism. The driving force behind all of its members is the good of others, in the awareness that each one of us possesses the good of others and that the common good also includes the good of the individual ". (Father Oreste Benzi)